Went to the farm today… I had a couple of goals in mind. Our ML elk season starts here December 2, so I needed to take the Renegade /Gm-LRH barrel out and check POI. And I am really glad I did – it had not been shot since last May and I figured it would be ready to go. Left/right I was right on… but @ 75 yards I was down a couple of inches… Got it taken care of and I am now ready…
Now, the second reason that I went – I needed to do some testing with the new bolt conversion I/we made for the Remington 700ml. What I was trying to do was to change the characteristic of the Remington from a ‘Plunger’ style ML to a bolt with a firing pin.
With that in mind, I would serve to make the rifle:
1. BH compatible
2. Stop the primer from backing out of the nipple
3. Stop a majority of the blow back coming back into the receiver.
4. Keep the bolt cleaner internally and externally.
This conversion was made to be compatible with the Cabelas/Canadian 209 conversion available on line.
My bolt conversion does require machining. A piece of 4140 ordinance steel was machined on the lathe to press fit inside the nose of the existing Remington bolt. This part gives the bolt a face so that the primer can not come out of the nipple. Next the hammer needed to be machined down to produce a firing pin. I copied the diameter of the Knight DISC so the pin turns out to be about 3/32’s and provide a very strong pin. After the insert was installed and the hammer reinstalled in the bolt out next operation was to reduce the length of the bolt nose so that the bolt could be closed on a bare nipple. Next we inserted the longest primer I had. That primer was a Winchester T7 and measures .3015, the Federal 209A measures .2965 and the Remington 209-4 that I normally use measures .285. The decision was made that we need to make the conversion fit the longest primer available + we had to allow for the minor difference in how people install their breevch plug and nipple. With all of that said there is a few thousands of space left between the longest primer and the bolt face so the bolt closes very easily on each primer.
Here are some pictures of the conversion. Keep in mind this is a 209 conversion. The primer is still installed easily in the nipple with a capper. The operation of the bolt does not extract the spent primer but I was able to pop them out with a finger nail or even more easily with the capper.
I did shoot BH graduating from 90 grains to 120 grains pushing a .40/200 grain XTP. The conversion was installed in Grouse’s 45 Remington. It turned out to be amazingly accurate with 110 grains of BH.
My impressions – success! The receiver seems to be cleaner. The gun shot BH very well so I know it will shoot T7 equally well. I just now removed the bolt and disassembled the bolt – no blow back in the bolt at all. The internal were sealed from blow back.
